Of all the classic conspiracy theories, only one has ever come close to
holding water for me — the claim that the moon landings were faked. There
are Galactic Federations of intense young sceptics, strangers to the
intimate caress of the opposite sex, admittedly, but wedded to the notion
that Nasa technicians stunted up the whole thing to give a propaganda bloody
nose to the
Russkies. You can’t really blame us for thinking this. It does rather tax
credibility that they could land a 60-tonne machine on a patch half the size
of the average Tesco car park 250,000 miles away. I mean, could you do it?
Should you ever wish to be disabused of such suspicions, the International
Astronautical Congress (IAC) is the place to go. This year, its 59th, it
beamed down to Glasgow, to colonise the Venusian cavities of the Scottish
Exhibition & Conference Centre, normally the territory of such curious
life forms as Will Young and Status Quo.
The congress is a bit like a spaceship scrapyard. You could order some
thrusters from one stall, a command module from another, a guidance system
from a third, then build A Saturn rocket in your backyard.
Andrew Strain, meanwhile, is manning the desk at Clyde Space, the
Maryhill-based spaceship battery and solar panel provider that represents
Scotland’s sole contribution to the process of boldly going. To get in the
spirit of things, the Clyde Space desk is offering a bowlful of
complimentary flying saucers, those rice-paper UFOs filled with sherbet.
It’s comforting to know that Scotland will not be crossing the final
frontier without a supply of novelty confectionery.
There’s more to the congress than the trade fair aspect, of course. There are
symposiums on such subjects as Space Traffic Management and Asteroid Threat
Mitigation. The occasional real astronaut can be spotted; you fancy they
saunter around with a slight air of hard-won superiority. Soyeon Yi is one
of them. The first Korean and only the second Asian woman in space, last
year the 30-year-old scientist spent 10 days aboard the International Space
Station as a payload operator. Here, she’s chatting and charming for the
motherland; South Korea will host the IAC next year. She’s handing out
samples of Korean space food, little shrink-dried packets of kimchi and
gochujang.
Soyeon is known at home as Crazy, Sexy Cool Astronaut. While certainly better
than my Korean, her English is not expert and it would be unfair to quote
her verbatim. So let’s go: “If I were God I’d say to people you get earth
free, water free, sky free. I give you free Earth! But you make dirty water.
Look at apples. Appreciate them. That’s why I go space. To do something for
people, for Earth.”
Space travel is humanity’s greatest party trick and it still makes news. The
Chinese space programme pulled off its first spacewalk last week; Nasa
celebrated its 50th birthday on Wednesday and launches its next project, the
Ares 1-X rocket, early next year. No longer, though, is this an era when a
bloke in a helmet and giant oven gloves is considered an unambigious
signifier of progress. Among a certain fraternity of anxious, thin-lipped
space-watchers, the question now is less how we do it than why should we do
it? In some quarters, the debate has moved to ethics.
There was a sense of this at the Less Remote discussions, a forum to consider
the more cerebral aspects of the space race. The speakers and audience
seemed rather vexed by a new range of Nasa probes, to be deployed on the far
side of the Moon, named penetrators. Such a designation, it was agreed,
rather enforced the patriarchal history of space travel and downplayed
women’s participation. There were environmental problems, it was agreed, in
burning the vast quantities of kerosene required for rocket propulsion and
also questions about human presumption — what gives humanity the right to
set foot where we haven't been invited?
“I’m here to ensure that people who do care about the ethics of visiting
bodies like the moon have a say,” said delegate Joanna Griffin. Another
speaker, Andrew Stones, an English artist, wasn’t particularly bothered
about humanity going into space at all: “It’s not really important whether
we actually get off the Earth. Inner space is more interesting to me than
outer space.”
The highlight of the seminars, though, was Frank Pietronigro, a cheerful chap
with a bushy moustache who came through by satellite link-up from San
Francisco. Pietronigro’s subject was The Potential Contributions of Queer
Culture on the Future of Space Exploration, and his thrust, if I can put it
like that, was this: that prejudice has enabled gay people to understand the
dislocation of space, to appreciate “the outsider status of mutants and
aliens”, so there should be more gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gendered
astronauts on space programmes.
“Is Nasa afraid to talk about the orgiastic potency of gay sexuality?”
Pietronigro wondered. And you had to concede that Nasa might well be. A
boffin type in the audience stood up, however, to point out that in zero
gravity, it’s impossible for the male organ to achieve the condition
necessary for sexual activity. This reminded another speaker that when the
Apollo XI mission left the moon, the US flag fell over.
The technocrats and shuttle-buffs in the next hall, meanwhile, were rehearsing
their defence of space travel since the days when Buzz Aldrin had a proper
first name. To you or me, the various modern planetary crises — resource
depletion, financial meltdown, global warming — might be good reason to rein
in the potential disbursement of billions of dollars. To space guys, they’re
reasons to get a move on.
The dream is a vast human diaspora to sustainable planets, preferably on
spacecraft using the patented AMC-21 sonic capacitator widget. “At the
moment, the human race is grubbing about on 1% of the real estate that’s
available,” said Alan Bold, of rocket engine developer Reaction. “But all
the minerals and chemicals we need are out there on other planets. If we’d
been here in the past, we’d be astonished that most coal comes from
Australia, a relatively modern continent. Space is the new Australia in that
regard.”
Even if the glory days of public awe are gone, space researchers point to the
continuing technical benefits here on Earth: global positioning satellites,
weather forecasting to facilitate efficient crop rotation, even cold and
heat-resistant clothing. So why didn’t they just devote their energies to
that in the first place? It’s the machines, isn’t it? The big, whizzy
machines, the sexy toy box of super-technology?
“Very possibly,” says Bob Parkinson, vice-president of the British
Interplanetary Society. “Some people like technology, some people like being
helpful. We in the field of astronautics like playing with machines that
ultimately help people. I can’t deny it, I’m afraid.”
